CEBU, Philippines — As the world marks the Earth Day yesterday, the Ecowaste Coalition has urged all registered voters to pick national and local candidates and party-list groups who will genuinely work with and for the people in ensuring a clean, healthy, safe and sustainable environment for all.

The group pointed out the need for voters to elect true champions for the environment as the impacts of climate change, marine pollution and hazardous waste trade become more obvious every day in the Philippines and globally.

"At the Senate and the House of Representatives, we need legislative leaders who will defend existing pollution prevention laws such as the ban on waste incineration and who will take the lead in ensuring the enactment of long overdue environmental acts such as the ban on single-use plastic and the ban on foreign waste importation,” said Aileen Lucero, national coordinator of the said Coalition.

Lucero, in a statement, said that we need senators and representatives across the political spectrum who will actively engage in getting national laws and regulations adopted to protect the environment against further degradation and uphold environmental health and justice.

The Coalition expressed its hope that registered voters will use their inherent discerning abilities to choose candidates and groups who will work and fight for their environmental right.

Lucero further said that the coalition is very much concerned with increasing chemical and plastic pollution that poses serious threat to the health of the overall environment, especially the world’s oceans.

“At the provincial, city and municipal councils, we need to install grassroots lawmakers who will file and fight for ordinances aimed at protecting the public health and the environment,” Lucero said.

She said that they want to see local government units promulgating ordinances that will ‘promote health and safety and enhance the right of the people to a balanced ecology’ in line with the general welfare clause of Republic Act 7160, or the Local Government Code.

"We need more local government executives who possess the political will to promote and uphold the environmental rights of their constituents,” she said. (FREEMAN)